Well I never thought the day would come, but I finally gave up my trusty old Blackberry for a shiny new Droid 3 from Verizon. When they finally came up with a decent android phone with a physical keyboard, I ran out of reasons not to upgrade. These are some of my initial impressions after using the phone for a couple days.

My entire family actually was due for phone upgrades, so most of us got the Droid 3 (my mom also enjoys the physical keyboards). My brother was actually the only one to choose an Iphone, which I'm almost certain is due to the overwhelming social pressures to fit-in he experiences as a freshmen in high school. Nevertheless, my experiences with the Droid have not been totally positive. Partially because of certain design choices, but also because I'm so used to a blackberry. This isn't a review of the specific phone so much as it is of the overall Android experience (Gingerbread for those interested).

It took me all of an hour to get all my applications setup how I wanted. I never needed to search the internet or read the manual to figure out what I was doing. Just like when I was 5, I simply pushed buttons until I figured out what they did. Once I got over the initial fun of a touch screen (just moving things back and forth for a couple minutes), I quickly went to the marketplace and loaded up some much needed apps.

Armed with my flashlight, Google maps, Facebook, and the angry birds series. I went to configure my home screens.

Widgets
Here's the thing. IPhones have a great design and aesthetic. As long as you enjoy that aesthetic and are willing to conform the way you use your phone to fit it, that works. But I was immediately struck by this nifty thing on the android called widgets. I can search the web, YouTube or Facebook, quickly browse my email inbox, or view the weather all from my home screen. No I mean it's literally ON my homescreen, I don't have to push an icon to go to it.

While that's great, and the quick view of information is helpful, here's a super concrete example of why widgets are better than icons. When an Iphone user wants to use the "flashlight" feature of their phone, they click the icon to open the flashlight app, then push a button to turn the light on. Simple right?

When I want to use my flashlight, I click an icon on my homescreen and the flashlight turns on or off. Wow! Why add extra clicks when I don't need them? Since widgets/icons can execute arbitrary code within an app, I'm not really using the app...I'm extending the functionality of my phone through this app. Moreover on the search widgets. Since they aren't forced into a rigid icon structure, but rather a modular design, they can do a lot more from the home screen.

Framework
This isn't a concrete example, but is more of a philosophical point. Android is designed to be a framework. It doesn't tell me how I should use my phone, rather it provides a framework for me to setup my phone the way I want. After I installed the skype app, when I clicked on someone's phone number, I was presented with a modal box asking me which application I wanted to use to complete the action, "Phone or Skype". Being a normal user, I clicked the remember my decision box and chose phone. But for those who have limited minutes in a data heavy environment, skype could be the default dialer.

The framework is integration, I don't have to go into an options menu to change it (initially) nor do I have to open the skype app and dial a number. I can change nearly everything about how my phone functions easily.

This lies at the core of why I love Android. It doesn't presume to understand how I want to use my phone, nor do I ever feel like there's a task I want to accomplish that cannot be done because of operating system limitations.

For instance, I now have every facebook friend as a contact in my phone, it's a lot more than I had, and kind of overwhelming, but when someone asks me if I have someone's number...chances are I do. The total integration of app and phone is both scary to me, but also immensely useful. Google apps such as calendar and mail are obviously integrated flawlessly, but I haven't used them too much yet.

Miscellany
It's not perfect out of the box. One of the things that annoyed me most was that there is no way to select all email messages and then mark them as read. Sucks right. But I could download an app and alter the way it works!

Another really cool feature I just discovered today is call-back texts. Basically, if someone calls me and I ignore the call, I immediately get a selection of three text messages I can click on to send the caller. Naturally these are configurable, and the two I see myself using the most are: "Hey I'm in class, what's up?" and "Hold on. I'll call you back in a couple minutes." Looking back I can't help but wonder how many times I've typed out that first message after someone calls me during class. It's genius.

The modularity of the framework leads to some very nice features as well. For instance, I can task kill things eating up resources. Or even better, I can view my battery usage based on application. (Angry Birds is killing my battery life). Just nice touches.

Finally, from a development stand point. It's so easy to develop for Android. So easy. It took me around 2 hours to get my environment setup and start debugging live on my phone. In contrast: 1) Steve Jobs decided I will never be deserving enough to develop for Iphone because I am a PC user (or because he's a money hoarder), 2) It's been about 6 weeks and we still can't get the development app paperwork done with Apple.

Conclusion
It's certainly not perfect, but Android is something that makes with happy with the underlying values it seems to support. The flexibility is much appreciated and the niftiness is icing. I'm actually quite pleased with it initially (despite the fact that the keys are now too big for my fingers!) I'll try and scrounge up a few other tidbits to share as I have some more time using it.